Viaje! (aka the best 10 days of my life)

I’m back! Sorry that it’s been over a month. I promise I haven’t died or fallen off the Iberian Peninsula or anything. Rather, I’ve been busy enjoying what is shaping up to be my best month in Spain so far.

Let me rewind to the last week in February, where I spent a whopping 72 hours back in the United States to interview for Clemson University’s National Scholars program. I was chosen in January as one of 32 finalists, and lucky for me, Clemson paid the airfare, hotel, and food for all finalists to attend. It was, for lack of a better word, grueling. I was extremely jet lagged (not to mention a bit reverse culture shocked), and had to make it through a group interview, and individual interview (where they asked everything from what I saw as the second biggest problem in Spain to what correlations exist between the problems in Wisconsin and Egypt), a writing prompt, a group seminar (consisting of 8 of us sorting out of pseudo world crisis), etc, etc. I left Clemson feeling grateful for the opportunity to see the campus, but highly doubtful that I had stood out in any way amongst the other 31 just as qualified candidates. But there was little time to dwell on that, because on Sunday it was back to Spain!

Upon my return to Spain, I had just one day of rest before departing for the 10 day Rotary trip through Spain and Portugal. Mika came to Valencia the day before, and on Wednesday I boarded a bus to Madrid with her, Stephanie, and a new exchange student from Australia- Marissa. Arriving at the Madrid bus station and seeing all the exchange students was wonderful. Most of them I hadn’t seen since the orientation in Madrid in September, and we spent hours recounting our past six months in Spain to each other.

I would love to give a day-by-day description of the trip, but that would be extremely lengthy and probably boring. Suffice it to say that this trip was probably the best 10 days of my entire life. We visited Granada, Seville, Huelva, Cordoba, Lisbon, Costa de Caprica, Merida, and Salamanca. I saw more incredible things than I could ever possibly list, but the things that made the trip so incredible weren’t the famous landmarks, but the people I was with. There’s something about being an exchange student that puts friendship on hyper speed, and within 2 days I felt as though our group had been lifelong friends. Here’s a shout out to Mika, Maddy, Marissa, Cristina, and Molly. Love you girls!

I have so many wonderful memories from that trip, from an insane carriage ride through Seville to our conversations with crazy chaperone Cesar to a McDonald’s drive-through to Cristina speaking Portuguese with an Italian/Andalucian accent. I loved the trip more than you could ever imagine, and if I had it my way, I would have stayed forever.

Our last night of the trip, in Salamanca, was bittersweet, but it was made a bit (or maybe more than a bit…) better when I opened an email saying that I was named as one of Clemson’s National Scholars. Full tution, room board, books, personal expenses, and a 6-week Europe trip next summer. We went out to celebrate my scholarship, best friends, and a Rotary exchange year to remember.

Enjoy the pictures!

The famous Moorish palace, the Alhambra, in Granda

The Mezquita in Cordoba. It was originally an Arab mosque, and the only reason it wasn't destroyed during the Inquisition is because the Christians had built a Cathedral right in the middle of it.

Mika and I in the Mezquita

Cordoba...absolutely gorgeous

The Sevilla cathedral at night

Plaza de España, Sevilla. It was originally built for the World Fair....anyone recognize it from Star Wars?

The whole group in the Plaza de España.

Stephanie and I at the Plaza de España in Sevilla. Each province of Spain has an arch with a map and a tile painting. Here's Valencia's.

Best lunch ever!! The restaurant had ancient Arab baths inside. 

A hilarious carriage ride through Sevilla

In the bell tower of the Cathedral in Sevilla

Huelva, the city where Christopher Columbus left Spain to discover America

Discoteca!

Love these girls :) An early morning walk in Costa de Caprica, Portugal

Best roomies ever! Lisbon, Portugal

Sintra, a beautiful little town in Portugal

Behind us is the Western-most point in Europe...it's the closest we'll be to the U.S. until this summer!

A pit stop to stretch or legs and see the ocean in Portugal

Roman ruins in Mérida

Molly (from MN) and I in front of a Rotary symbol on a hotel in Salamanca

The gorgeous cathedral in Salamanca

Plaza Mayor in Salamanca with my favorite girls

Andorra and Turning 19

I hope I left you all hanging at the end of my last post : )

Well, after I got back from Dénia, I was having sort of a crappy week. I won’t bother going into details, but basically I was just feeling a little down. But then on Wednesday, I logged into Facebook and saw a message from Mika that said “It is important that you go on Skype right NOW.” So, I got on Skype and Mika immediately called me and asked “Paige, do you want to come to Andorra to ski?” Ummm….YES! What did she think I would say? The catch was that we would be leaving on Sunday, so I needed to get permission that night. After asking my host parents, and quickly calling my real parents and my tutor, it was all set.

Mika’s host parents are good friends with a man named Jesús, who is the principal of a school for students who want to be physical education teachers. Every year, they take a ski trip to Andorra, and since they had extra spots, Mika was invited even though she doesn’t go to that school. Lucky for me, Mika’s host parents thought of me and asked if I could go too : )

crossing the border from Spain to Andorra

We left for Andorra early Sunday morning, but I got to Dénia the day before. Since I obviously didn’t think to bring any ski apparel to Spain, I sported a borrowed assortment of ski clothes that included my host dad’s snow pants and Mika’s host dad’s XL ski jacket (that’s why I look so huge in all the pictures, haha). The bus ride to Andorra took about 9 hours including stops, but even though it was long, it was gorgeous. We drove along the coast for hours, and then started driving through the mountains of Cataluña, where all the street signs and shop names immediately switched to Catalan instead of Spanish. Several hours later we spotted the Pyrenees Mountains, and finally crossed the border into Andorra. (By the way, Andorra is classified as a “micro-country”, for those of you who didn’t know).

Me on the mountain

When we arrived to the ski resort (Arinsal in Vallnord), we got fitted for our ski gear and checked into the hotel. Mika and I shared a room with a girl from Bulgaria and her Belgian boyfriend. What was interesting was that Spanish was the only common language between all of us.

The next day, the skiing began. We had five full days of skiing, with 2 hours of classes included each day. Mika and I were in one of the more “advanced” groups since we had both skied before. Let me just say that our ski instructor, Juan, was certifiably insane. That week, I tried things that I would never in my life have attempted. Juan took us off jumps, down small cliffs, and through clusters of pine trees where we were told it was “cheating” to go down the actual groomed slope. One particularly memorable morning, we went down an extremely steep drop off through the trees, and the five people in front of me tumbled down like bowling pins. I followed suit a few seconds later.

Mika and I

Me in the city

We stopped at a random hotel downtown to use the internet so I could transfer money. It turned out to be the hotel where the Rotary Club of Andorra meets!

An exciting moment of the trip was that I celebrated my 19th birthday on February 2nd. We didn’t really do all that much for it, since we were tired from skiing, but we did go into the city to shop and buy candles, which I squished onto two tiny pieces of cake at dinner that night. The whole group came to sing to me, and overall it was wonderful. I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than a ski trip to Andorra.

My birthday!

Mika and I again

Our ski class "super paralelos" (super parallel) with crazy instructor Juan, who's wearing the sunglasses

Well, this is getting extremely long, so I’ll stop now, but I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and check out this video of the crazy wind we experienced one of the days skiing (you'll have to copy and paste it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuEboHJsA-o


Love always,

Paige

Enero

January flew by at the kind of speed ex-exchange students warn you about, and now I’m sitting at the halfway mark of my exchange year. It’s a strange feeling, and although it’s definitely a bit nostalgic, I’m determined to make the most of the time that’s left.

With that said, here are a few memorable moments of January:

1) Ice Skating: When we were still on vacation from school in early January, my friends and I went ice skating at a new rink that had opened up. Most of my friends had never been ice skating, and although I’d like to say that my Wisconsinite background allowed me to show them all up doing triple axles across the ice, I can’t say I was all that much better. After skating, we went to the mall, where my friend David stopped to point out a “weird” pastry shop that had just opened. It was a cinnamon roll shop! I told my friends what they were called, and they all laughed at how funny the name sounds in English. I suppose “cinnamon roll” does sound a little funny. We tried them and they were quite delicious : )

2) Rotary meeting: I FINALLY met my Rotary club. Valencia Rotary is not exactly what I would call “involved” with the exchange students. My tutor had emailed me at the beginning of the year saying he was my tutor, if I needed anything let him know, and that I would have to come sometime and give a speech to the Rotary club. I have been slightly nagging him about this speech thing all year. Hey, I wanted to meet my host Rotary club, and gosh darn it, I wanted to give the speech I’d prepared. He finally invited me to a meeting last month, and my speech and powerpoint presentation, I must say, went very well. I was even congratulated by the Valencia Rotary club president as having “the best Spanish of all the exchange students who’ve come to Valencia.” (sorry, had to brag there- I’d been feeling a little discouraged with the language, so that vote of confidence cheered me up a bit) The meeting and dinner, despite the fact that it was a Monday, went until well past midnight, but my tutor took me home “early” at 11:45. Typical Spanish.

3) Dénia with Mika: The weekend of the 21st, I went to Dénia to visit Mika. We did our usual drinking of dozens of cafés con leche, staying up until all hours talking, and trying on makeup at every cosmetic store in Dénia (okay, that part was just Mika). One night we even went over to one of her friend’s houses for fondu, which was soooo good. We had a little incident with the gas tank running out at her house on the last day, though, which meant no hot water to shower and no gas for the stove to cook lunch. Since her host parents were gone, we had to take a bus and then walk in the rain looking for somewhere to eat. Since nothing’s open on Sundays in Spain, however, we ended up at a particularly sketchy Doner Kebab with a constant stream of Chinese entering to play the slot machine. I was sad to go, but little did I know, I would be seeing her very soon….(do you like my suspenseful buildup to my next blog?)

Un beso a todos,

Paige
Saying goodbye at the bus station

Café con leche and a pastry that looked a lot better than it was

The Holiday Post: Part 2

New Year’s:

New Year's Eve came the day after we got back from Rome, and that night we went over to my grandma’s house for dinner and of course, the grapes. The twelve grapes are a New Year’s tradition in Spain. The tradition actually began in 1909, when grape growers in the south thought of it as a good way to cut down on the grape surplus that year. The tradition is to eat a grape on each of the twelve clock chimes before midnight. If you finish them all, you will have good luck in the next year. (I finished all of mine, so no worries). It is also tradition to wear something red, and to start out the New Year with a step on the right foot. Haha. I just realized that could be a pun in English. Get it? Start out on the right foot? In Spanish the pun doesn’t work because it’s just "pie derecho." Anyway…after the clock struck twelve, we all toasted with an “Italian toast” (I won’t explain…it was a very lengthy toast with several comical steps...I'm sure there's a youtube video on it somewhere) and then gave everyone the traditional dos besos and a grand “Feliz Año!”

This was by far the end of my New Year’s. At 1:30 a.m., I had arranged to meet with Nuria, David, Patricia, Mendoza, and Juanmi to go out that night. All the teenagers in Spain buy tickets in advance for discotecas on New Year’s. My group of friends began talking about which tickets to buy in early November. (It’s kind of a big deal). We stayed at the discoteca until around 6:00 a.m., and I crawled into bed sometime around 6:30. That’s Spain for you. Needless to say, I was a bit tired when we had lunch with the grandparent’s the next day.

The "Christmas Card" one of my friends photo-shopped. None of us knows what's up with the weird lights on everyone's faces, but it looks kind of cool!
Tres Reyes:

Tres Reyes is the 6th of January, and it’s traditionally the day when the three magic kings come to give gifts to all of the children in Spain. An interesting fact is that because of American influence, more and more families have also adopted the tradition of Santa Claus (Papá Noel, in Spanish), something my host dad says is a problem in Spain because many kids now expect presents both on Christmas and on Three King’s Day. My host parents told me that when they were little, they had never even heard of Santa Claus, but today it’s more common. However, the Three Kings are still much more popular than Santa Claus in Spain.

The traditional cake for Three Kings Day is called Roscón, and it’s basically a sweet bread filled with chocolate or vanilla crème. Inside, two small figurines are hidden. One is the good surprise, usually a small figure of an animal or something similar, and the person who finds it is crowned king or queen for the day. The other surprise is the haba, or bean, and the person who finds it has to pay for the Roscón. In the three Roscónes we ate this week, I didn’t find any of the surprises. Although half of a Roscón is still sitting in the fridge, and the bean has not been found, so I’d better be careful.


My family's Roscón

On the morning of the 6th, I woke up to frantic knocking on my door and Paula whispering “Paige! Regalos!” (“Paige! Presents!”). We went downstairs to find a pile of presents under the tree. I received a jogging sweatshirt and a really beautiful gray sweater from my host parents, ehem, I mean the Three Kings.

Many people comment on how awful it is that I can’t go home for the holidays this year, but honestly I consider myself lucky to get to experience these traditions with my host family. It is something that I will probably not get to do ever again in my life, and so instead of feeling sad, I feel overwhelmingly thankful.


Un beso enorme y un fuerte abrazo

Paige

The Holiday Post: Part 1

Spain’s Christmas season begins sometime around December 8th (Inmaculada Concepción- the Immaculate Conception) and ends on January 6th (Día de Reyes- Three Kings Day).

My Christmas season in Spain was filled with food, family, more food, and more family. I know the memories from these past few weeks will probably be some of the best from my time in Spain. Of course, it was difficult to be away from home for the holidays, but I took the “once in a lifetime opportunity” approach and enjoyed every minute of it.

Christmas cookies:

The Thursday before Christmas, Stephanie came over to make Christmas cookies with me. We actually hadn't planned to meet up that day...or so I thought. We had talked about possibly making cookies, but in the end I thought we had agreed that due to the bus schedules, there wasn't enough time. However, around 6:00, I was out running when I heard someone yell my name, and I turned around to see Stephanie getting off the bus. Stephanie and I live on complete opposite sides of Valencia, and the sheer fact that she managed to get on the right bus to my neighborhood (which only comes once an hour) really impressed me. It was a very weird moment to see her getting off the bus, to say the least. Apparently she had no idea where to get off though, and when she told the bus driver she needed to get off at Mas Camarena (my enormous elliptical shaped neighborhood/small community), he answered, "The whole thing is Mas Camarena!" Stephanie told me she was about to just take the bus back to the city when she saw me running past the bus stop. Ha! It was a very lucky day.

We had a fun night making sugar cookies in the shape of the U.S. and Wisconsin (thanks to some very adorable cookie cutters I brought to Spain) and exchanging our Christmas presents to each other. The cookies turned out great, and my host family loved them, although despite the fact that I told them numerous times they are sugar cookies, they have named them "butter cookies." Hardly any butter is used in Spanish baking, and apparently the amount of butter in the cookies really stood out to them. I was told they taste like "those really buttery Danish cookies." I was going for the classic American sugar cookie, but that works too I guess.

Frosting a U.S. shaped cookie with Nutella

Wisconsin shaped sugar cookies!

Valencia exchange students!

Christmas Eve:

On Christmas Eve, the whole family came over for dinner. If you’ve kept up with my blog, I’m sure you know that “whole family” means my host family, mi abuela (my dad’s mom), los yayos (my mom’s parents), mis tíos (my dad’s brother Fran and his wife Ester), and mi primita Julia (Fran and Ester’s daughter). We spent the afternoon getting the house ready, and by the time everyone came it was perfect. Dinner with the family was wonderful, and for dessert we enjoyed a variety of turrón, Spain’s traditional Christmas nougat-type sweet.


my grandma, Ester, and Julia

at the dinner table with my yaya

assorted turrónes and other candies

After dinner, it was time for presents. In Spain, presents are usually reserved for Three Kings Day, but since the whole family was over, we did presents on Christmas Eve. A funny story about my presents: in Spain, it seems that everyone wears slippers in the house. I never wore slippers in the U.S.- my house was carpeted, and if I was cold I put on socks. However, my host family continually commented on my lack of slippers. My host mom told me one day she was worried I would “hurt myself” if I didn’t wear them. So for Christmas, I wasn't all that surprised that my host mom gave me a pair of slippers. The funny part came when I heard both of my grandmas whispering after I unwrapped them. “Oh no! I bought her slippers too!” And the other grandma: “You bought her them as well? So did I!” Apparently the news of my bare feet had spread beyond the immediate family.


presents under the tree

Everyone stayed until around 2 a.m., when we finally said our Buenas Noches and Felices Navidades and I climbed the stairs for bed. It was a wonderful Christmas with a wonderful family.

Roma!

Last week, my host family and I went on an incredible vacation to Rome. We went for four days, which was the perfect amount of time to see basically everything. And believe me, we saw everything. I won’t bore you with a day-to-day rundown, but basically it was amazing. The ruins were breathtaking, the driving was insane, and the pasta was to die for. I’m so thankful to my host family for this trip.

What was funny about being in Italy was that I realized that when I was comparing things, I compared them not to the U.S., but to Spain. I found myself noticing that they eat dinner “early” in Italy, and then had to remind myself that there was a time when I too, ate dinner before 9 p.m. The thing that stuck out the most to me was the language. I feel like most Americans have this notion of Italian being an incredibly beautiful language. (I know I did.) But after being immersed in Spanish for so long, Italian suddenly sounded almost harsh. I mentioned this to my host dad, and he said that most of the Spanish don’t like the Italian accent. (Although Paula and I did have fun saying “Grazie! Prego! Bonjourno! and Ciao!” to every waiter, cleaning lady, and museum worker in Rome).

So, without further ado, here are some pictures. Enjoy!
El Coliseo!

The fountain we ended up at when I was in charge of reading the map....bad idea...

me inside of the Colliseum

Mmmmm...Italian food! I would like to give a special shout out to this pizza, the cappuccinos at the hotel, and the chocolate cake on the last day.

Swiss guards at the Vatican!

Making a wish at the Fountain of Trevi. I made three actually. (Hey there's no limit!)

Capilla Sistina...breathtaking. We weren't actually supposed to take pictures, but I managed to sneak a few.

Me with Rome in the background

Which marble head looks most like Ambrosio?...